Tag: harry potter

dagny-hashtaggart:

lullabyknell:

Hot damn, I just thought of something really cool. So, like, I headcanon that Harry kept Parseltongue after he lost the horcrux, because it’s just really fun to imagine stuff like Harry talking to Albus Severus’ pet snake or finding a little snake in the garden and hissing a hello. Parseltongue is really neat and snakes are awesome, so it’s so feel-good to imagine that instead of being used for Dark Arts, Harry’s just using it to make convo to little scaly cuties.

Like, Parseltongue apparently transfers with the soul or whatever? So you could totally claim that Harry’s soul/magic kept/learned the skill. A skill passed down through the soul/magic could totally transfer that way.

But… do you know who also had a piece of Voldemort’s soul inside them and was speaking Parseltongue pretty regularly for a long period of time? Ginny. Ginny Weasley.

So imagine twelve-year-old Ginny Weasley going home to heal after the whole Chamber of Secrets business, and finding a snake in the garden, muttering about sunny rocks and sleep. And it scares her so badly at first, because what if Tom isn’t really gone? What if Tom’s still lurking in some dark place in her head? She freaks out and nearly doesn’t come home for dinner that day… except… then she remembers that Harry can speak Parseltongue too. 

Harry had an horrible encounter with Voldemort where Voldemort tried to take his life and somehow a piece of his power transferred to Harry, so now Harry can speak Parseltongue. Maybe she just got a piece of power too when Tom tried to steal her life?

It’d be really cool to have an AU where Ginny kept Parseltongue and decided that no, I’m not going to let Tom run my life and was treated Parseltongue like the cool trick it is. And Harry is the only one who full gets it and doesn’t get a little bit uncomfortable when she drops into hissing, and maybe Harry shyly gets encouraged to start hissing back. Voldemort tried to ruin our lives so let’s stick it to him and his Slytherin ancestors, right? Yeah!

Anyway, twelve year old Ginny and thirteen year old Harry having hissing conversations at the Gryffindor table, using it to talk smack and have inside jokes, and using it to scare the heck of out any pureblood supremacists. (Who are all absolutely scandalized because Parseltongue is something Salazar Slytherin is famous for and here it’s being using for casual conversation and Quidditch commentary by a Potter and a Weasley.)

Just picture these two adorable children hissing jokes at each other in the hallways and helping each other recover from their fear and trauma.

Ginny (in Parseltongue), “<Hey Harry, let’s both stare at Malfoy breaking into laughter and hissing at each other in Parseltongue.>”

Harry, “<…That would totally freak him out. …I’m in.>”

Ginny, “<Okay, he’s noticed we’re staring now.>”

Draco, “Do you have something to say Potter?!”

Ginny, “<Laugh now.>”

Harry and Ginny burst out into enormous laughter and Draco Malfoy is furious and gets increasingly mad as Harry and Ginny crack up and hiss things like, “<Great weather we’re having today!>” and “<How about them Harpies?>”
And Draco can’t call a Professor on them because he can’t prove they’re saying anything bad (and it’s just icing on the top that they actually aren’t and he’s getting worked up over nothing).

This continues well into their relationship and into adulthood. All of the Potter-Weasley children can speak Parseltongue and have a foolproof way of having secret conversation in public. Sometimes they have to smack Jamie Sirius on the head to use English in public and tell Lily Luna to stop trying to scare people and convince them you’re the next Dark Lady. Harry and Ginny hiss at each other all throughout Ministry Events and Quidditch Events (Rita Skeeter cannot eavesdrop on them and she is furious) and to their children, lovingly telling them in this “language of the Dark Arts” to “<Behave yourselves>“ and ”<Remember to wear your jumper when it’s cold out.>“

Somewhere out there Tom Riddle and scores of Gaunts are rolling in their graves. Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley do not care. 

Topics i had not expected to consider on this particular rainy early afternoon: Parseltongue pillow talk.

angstriddentrashhuman:

scipia-of-the-stella:

kyraneko:

cinnamonrolltoogayforthisworld:

gaelissfelin:

accio-shitpost:

tbh people mock harry for going back to rescue fleurs sister in the second triwizard task but harry knows dumbledore better than anyone else. he probably looked at the situation and thought “would dumbledore let an eight year old drown just because fleur couldnt do this bit? yes. yes he would.”

it’s also possible he was acting off of the lessons he learned in the abusive dursley household. that’s why he does a lot of his so-called “hero complex” shit. he takes a lot of personal responsibility for other people bc he learned growing up that “no one’s here for you, no one will help you, you will not catch any breaks”. he helps bc if he didn’t, who would? certainly not the dursleys, and that’s what he grew up with.

he does things by himself and the two people he actually trusts, bc he’s learned that authority figures are no help and will only make things worse. he takes situations at face value bc he’s never seen other options in his life, he’s never HAD other options in his life. speaking very personally, that was a serious marker of abuse that i saw in myself – i never thought abt escape, or what i could do to improve my situation, bc i didn’t even see that as an option. the options were survive or don’t, deal w it or don’t, acclimate or implode.

maybe he wasn’t thinking abt what DUMBLEDORE would do, what anyone at hogwarts would do. maybe he was acting off what he knew the dursleys (his main authority figures) would do. the dursleys would let the girl drown. and harry was there, and harry could do something, and so harry did. he took personal responsibility for fleur’s sister’s safety bc all his life he’s learned that authority figures cannot be trusted to do so.

people characterize these aspects of harry as a “hero complex” or a “stupid nobility” or a “lack of common sense”, but i don’t agree with that. i can’t put my finger on exactly what it is. it’s not completely unhealthy; it’s even very useful and responsible on occasion.

it’s called “complex ptsd” and if you get out of the abusive situation before you’re old enough to understand how fucked up it was, like Harry did, you don’t end up with the classic flashbacks so much, just atypical behavior patterns and a high risk of other shit. That’s why Harry is so fucked up by everything that Umbridge does, it’s because he’s being retraumatized in his safe space.

Seriously, the Dursleys would have not only let her drown, they would have let her drown so they could blame Harry for it afterwards. (Although the loudest “Potter, too busy winning to care about anyone else” voice in his head would probably be Snape’s.)

Incidentally this is even more clear in the first and second books, to me. Because Harry DID go to adults and say someone’s trying to steal the stone, and what did the adults do? Did they say, yes, we know, we’re taking precautions, real, good protective measures? Noooo. Did they say, thank you, we’ll look into it, even? Noooo. They said, don’t be silly, it’s not your concern, nothing to see here, little boy, run along and do your schoolwork.

And they said this to a boy whose entire life experience has never involved an adult that can be depended on. And they lied, lied about their own knowledge, said “that’s silly” when they know “that’s true.” And they were too convincing: since he as well knew the truth, what they ended up convincing him was that they didn’t know. And it fit right in with his expectations. Adults, whether actively malicious (the Dursleys, Snape) or well-meaning but oblivious (Mrs. Figg, Harry’s primary-school teachers, the other Hogwarts teachers), can’t be depended on. If anything’s got to be done, Harry and his friends have got to do it himself.

Second book, same thing—they’re headed for the teacher’s lounge to tell the teachers it’s a basilisk, and overhear the teachers saying that Ginny Weasley’s been taken by the monster, and they need to close Hogwarts, and their only plan to rescue Ginny is to send Gilderoy Lockhart—knowing full well he’s a fraud, a coward, and no match for a Cornish pixie, let alone a basilisk. Once again, the adults are flat-out useless and if anyone is going to save Ginny, it’s gotta be Harry and Ron. 

Notably, this is after another ball-drop on the part of the adults: when Harry’s been framed for underage magic and locked up in his room and starved by people who have every intention of keeping him out of Hogwarts forever, it’s other kids, Ron, Fred, and George, who go rescue him, and when the adults find out, one of them punishes and scolds and the other is only interested in how his car worked.

In book three, we meet a couple of adults that are competent, helpful, and willing to listen—Sirius and Remus—and the other adults come in and the end result is, one’s fired and the other has to go on the run lest he have his soul sucked out by dementors. Dumbledore does listen and give them the necessary hints, but it’s Harry, and Hermione this time, who have to do the work.

And then in Order of the Phoenix, in comes the smothering bullshit about how he’s too young to be in the Order and needs to leave everything to the grownups, after the grownups have dropped the ball four years running and are batting zero on the trust-and-listening factor—no wonder he threw a tantrum, I would’ve thrown a tantrum, he was fucking entitled to one.

“Well, that was a bit stupid of you,” said Ginny angrily, “seeing as you don’t know anyone but me who’s been possessed by You-Know-Who, and I can tell you how it feels.”
Harry remained quite still as the impact of these words hit him. Then he turned on the spot to face her.
“I forgot,” he said.

 – OotP

“he does things by himself and the two people he actually trusts… it’s not completely unhealthy; it’s even very useful and responsible on occasion.” – @gaelissfelin

…this.  Harry sees people as: a. him and people he trusts, b. people to be evaded, and c. people in need of help.  When he gets backed into a corner (Voldemort inside his head, heading down the trapdoor alone, off to the DoM alone, into the Forest alone), the circle of people he trusts shrinks down from the DA/OotP, to the Trio, to just himself.  Harry never wants to be a hero or gets off on it, he’s just a person who’s suffered from the bystander effect and doesn’t want to be a bystander himself.

…that’s what it is, why it’s useful, I think.  It’s not a hero complex, it’s an anti-bystander complex.  Sometimes it only takes one person standing up.

When I was younger I never understood why people thought Harry wasn’t thinking things through. But now that I am older and have my diagnosis of PTSD I realize that I was just one abused child identifying with another. It was logical to me that Harry not trust the adults in his life because I couldn’t trust any in mine. No one ever believed me when I told them I was being bullied, my parents were too wrapped up in screaming at each other to give a fuck about me. You go that long feeling like a shadow without a voice and you just start doing things on your own because who the fuck cares about you. You wind up with a protective streak a mile wide because in the back of your mind you know that things can’t change for you but maybe you can change them for someone else even if it means taking their pain as your own. No wonder Harry winds up an Auror, he’s been saving people and getting himself hurt since birth, he needs a psychiatrist to help him but he doesn’t trust anyone so he just throws himself into the only thing he knows how to do rather than healing. It’s by sheer force of will that he’s not catatonic or having PTSD flashbacks every time he goes to work.

gladiolus—amicitia:

almostawinchester:

freaksandtallymarks:

siriusly-not-over-remus:

aenramsden:

emnneryn:

I like to think that Rita Skeeter totally lost whatever renown she had after the war and so Harry and Ginny and the others like to pick up her stories for fun without worrying about the effect it’ll have on their image? Like Harry just idly turns a page every morning and goes, “Oh, we’re getting a divorce.”
And Ginny yawns as she fetches two coffee mugs and says, “Is it because I’m snogging Neville?”
“No,” says Harry, “it’s because I’m snogging Neville.”
And Ginny slams down her mug and says, “Goddamnit, Harry, let me have my affair in peace, would you?”

They have this sort of conversation in public, sometimes. Especially in places (the Leaky Cauldron, the Three Broomsticks, etc) where they know that it’ll get back to Skeeter.

I like to imagine that the kids get in on it as well. Like Albus and Scorpius can be over heard in the Great Hall with the latest Potter Family gossip

“Did you hear that your dad is leaving your mum for my father?”

“I thought mum was leaving dad for your mum, Scorp?”

“No that was last week. Your mum is with your aunt Luna right now.”

“Ah, my mistake. Pass the pumpkin juice.”

Please tell me that the cursed child was just another bullshit story that the kids fed to her.

New head-canon: Rita Skeeter wrote The Cursed Child.

I’ve been ignoring this post in my notifs for ages but this is now the only explanation for the Cursed Child that I will accept.

accio-shitpost:

tbh people mock harry for going back to rescue fleurs sister in the second triwizard task but harry knows dumbledore better than anyone else. he probably looked at the situation and thought “would dumbledore let an eight year old drown just because fleur couldnt do this bit? yes. yes he would.”